Saturday, September 27, 2014

I know, you
though I was dead :-) but no, I was just too lazy (or
busy) to post anything. But anyway, I didn’t posted but I painted few things
since the last time.

So here is
my last big mini, my first for the Warmachine game. This one is not for me, it’s
a commission (when you know how slow I am it’s really weird to think that
somebody asked me to paint something for him with a short deadline :-) ).

This mini
was really a nightmare to build, I had a lot of problems. The resin was not
good, too much retardant in it so she was still soft on some parts and I had to
make a lot of arrangement to keep the mini standing.

The
painting step was more successful. It was the first time that I used a fluorescent
paint. Quite fun.

An advice
about the use of this kind of paint: put a basecoat of normal paint about the
same color (yellow in this case) because the fluorescent paint is really
transparent and you will lose less time building your effect.

I’m happy
with the final result, the green light effect is quite interesting and the
metal is realistic enough considering the time I had to spend on it.

Saturday, May 31, 2014

It’s been a
while since I posted on this blog and it’s time to put this right.

I received
comments and questions on my Instagram about the colors I use to paint my
Flames of War minis. Questions like what color do I use or why I’m not using
this or that color. Instead of doing a long comment on my Instagram I prefer to
answer all those questions in one good post here.

After my
research on soviet uniforms I wanted to write a post on the subject but you
know, we always postpone and I think it’s time to expose my ideas and choices.
So, sorry, it will be a long post but I think it can be useful for a lot of
people, even those who don’t paint soviets as soon as those advices work for
whatever model you paint.

The start
of my thought on this subject began when I wanted to paint my first infantry and
looked in the Red Bear book to find what Battlefront advices to use as a
basecoat for uniforms. I had in my collection of paint two jars of Russian Uniform
color: Vallejo 924 and Andrea NAC-08 which are pretty much the same. I love
this color; it's a faded dark green, very interesting. So I was very
disappointed when I saw that it’s totally not that color adviced in the book
(Khaki Grey 880 or Khaki 988). Damn, I wanted to use that color for my army and
I really prefer the green than the khaki. I was then divided between the
feelings of wanting a quite historically accurate color and wanting an army
with a color I love. I decided then to do some research on the internet and books.
I learned a lot and I want to share it.

First thing
I did was to check several modeler’s forums and blogs on the subject. There is
a lot about that on the internet because, like everything about historical equipment
and uniforms, this is a matter of debate and interpretations. I didn’t
look for the perfectly accurate thing but I didn’t want something completely
wrong and the good thing with modelers is that a lot of them are total nerds,
making tons of research and they can be a great source of information. Just
remember that those people can also make mistakes.

Here are
two short pdf guides very usefull and you will see that there is
something very important written: there are a lot of variants for the uniform
color. And you will even discover that on the same website, by the same author, the
guy gives different colors for the same items. I found those on a very
interesting website with a lot of information for modelers.

That was a
great start for me and I really thank Michael Farnworth for his guides but I
needed to cross the information in order to be sure that this was not the wild
imaginings of one guy.

The second
website I would like to talk about is actually a blog: the blog of the very
well known Troy from Ritter-krieg. His work on Flames of War minis is amazing
and he painted soviets so it was perfect for me. Especially when I realized
that he posted an article about a book on the soviet soldier of World War 2: http://ritterkrieg.blogspot.fr/2012/03/soviet-ghq-and-new-book.html

First
thing, I bought the book right after reading the post. Great book, I love it. A
lot of pictures, sorted by date.

Second
thing, Troy said which color he finally chose for his own army. He chose Yellow
Green (881) but he also said that there are a lot of other colors that would
match: Brown Violet (887), Russian Uniform WWII (924), Middlestone (882), Khaki
(988), etc.

Third
thing, it learned me what Troy thought on the subject of choosing the color and
why we should be careful of the pictures and references we use.

While I was
waiting my book on soviet soldiers I received a box of 1:35 soviet jeep crew as a
gift for an order I made on the internet. Nothing special about this box except
it has a color grid for the uniforms and gives advices. It’s a box from the MiniArt
company and I thought that would be good to have the idea of a professional
brand on the subject. The colors proposed
are: Middlestone (882) for the main uniform color and Russian Uniform WWII
(924) for one jacket only and a skirt.

I finally
received my precious book and I went through the pages over and over looking at
the pictures of all those uniforms and equipment. I started to type a complete
file on which color I would use for each piece of equipment on my minis etc.

I’m not
allowed to show you pictures of this book so I took the sample pictures from a
selling website. You can see on this page the different colors between the
uniform of the guys on the right.

And the same occurs all over the pages: there is one,
especially, showing five breeches with completely different colors from olive green
to brown.

You can
see on the second picture below the differences in colors between the caps. Likewise, on the two helmets on the left (top left corner and bottom left corner), one is dark green whereas the other looks far more brighter and yet they are both from the same period of war.

All this
reminded me my own old uniforms from French army. They were all official uniforms which
looked almost the same when I got them but after a while under the sun, after
few washes, they all faded in different ways. This is totally normal; the uniforms
are made in different factories which use different dyes and also different
fabrics. Those uniforms react to the hard life of field in different ways. If
it happens for a modern army what could it be for an army on war 70 years ago?
(Especially a wide country as Russia with a mass production system.)

Another
source of inspiration for your minis could be the pictures of people
participating in WWII reenactment. You can find pictures of these events on
the internet:

As you can
see on these pictures, there are a lot of shades of colors for the same items (uniform, helmet, etc). But the reliability of this source is not perfect because
some of those people wear real old uniforms, faded with the time, and others
wear complete reproductions.

Another thing to consider is: pictures change your perception of colors depending on the weather, the time of the day... You surely already have seen how colors could appear slightly different on your picture compared to reality.

If you want to see historical picture with funny colors, look at this:

So, as Troy,
I made a list of the colors that matched the real ones (according to me, again).As Troy, my first choice was Yellow Green
(881). But because I wanted to show the disparity in colors I explained above on my minis (I
know, I’m crazy) I chose also three other colors: Middlestone (882), Khaki (988)
and UA240 4BG from Lifecolor brand. I chose also several colors as punctual
variation for few vests and trousers: Russian Uniform (924), UA 206 Olivgrün,
UA 222 Olive Drab and UA 221 Khaki Olive Drab from Lifecolor brand. Here is a sample of the few colors I used:

I applied
these colors randomly on trousers and vests as you can see on my first infantry
platoon:

In the book,
Russian Uniform (924) doesn’t appear so much on field uniforms but more on
service uniforms. It appears also as an early war color and because it’s quite
dark I didn’t want to use it so much at last.

This last
point raises two other questions: the scale effect and the aesthetic point of view.

The point
for us is that we paint minis that represent a man at a distance of … well,
let’s do the math.

There is a
simple formula to determine the distance when you know the size of the subject
and the angle at which you perceive it.

The size
(meters) equal to the angle (I don’t know the name of this unit of measurement
in English sorry, thousandth?) time the distance (km).

size =
angle x distance

So angle =
size / distance

We know
that a FoW mini is about 15mm (0.015m)

Imagine
that you are looking your mini at a distance of 30cm (0.0003km)

So the
angle is equal to 0.015/0.0003 = 50

Let’s say
we are looking at a man of 1.75m high (of medium height). Then if that man is
our mini we can say we are seeing him at a distance of:

1.75/50 =
0.035km = 35m

Now,
imagine that you’re looking at your minis on the table, so about 90cm of
distance. Then:

0.015/0.0009
= 16.6

Then 1.75/16.6
= 0.105km = 105m

So now, look
at people at 100m of distance, then look at them closer and you will see that
your perception of the color will change. This can be taken into consideration
when you paint your minis making your color lighter than it should be in order
to perceive it right. It’s not an obligation, it’s a choice and I just say that
if you want to, you can take it into account.

The second
point raised by the fact that we are here painting models, especially playing
minis, is that they need to pop on the table. At least for me, if they are to
dark they will be boring and not “readable”. All the details will be lost and
that would be a shame that we miss the work you did on your army with so much care. This point is not embellished with math or whatever because it’s purely
subjective. This is the main issue for me: the aesthetical prevail.

I saw one
day a thread on German paratroopers and people were almost arguing about the
color of the trousers: I think it’s too bluish, no you’re wrong it should be more
grey, depends on the period, can we really consider that those guys will still
have trousers from the start of the war, I’m right and you don’t know what you’re
talking about etc. I have no problem on discussing the color of
whatever items but those guys were finally just arguing and not sharing.

The problem
I saw in that thread was that people were fighting about a color on 15mm minis
which were really awesomely painted and the only thing they saw was a problem
of perception of color.

Yeah,
perception, because there is one last thing people always forget: we don’t all
see the colors the same way. Our eyes are all different and for a lot of
reasons we don’t see exactly the same way as our neighbours, the same way as
when you take a picture with two different cameras you won't have exactly the
same result.

Here is my
conclusion. As you saw, there are many parameters that make that research fascinating
or boring: official and non official uniforms, different fabrics from different
factories, color changed by the picture, fading due to years and weather
conditions, period considered, scale effect, impressive look on the game table,
perception. Many parameters which allow you to choose the color(s) you prefer
in a wide range of shades. Just remember that your minis are yours and only
yours. Some people will be total nerd about the historical accuracy of details,
some will want an army fast to paint, some will spend hours painting just 20
infantry men (I’m one of those) and nobody is right or wrong. They are just
minis.

To those
who spend hours in research, trying to have something the most realistic, I
will tell them that they are painting 1/100 plastic, resin or metal made stuff;
it’s not realistic at all anyway.

To those
who want an army fast painted I will answer: great but your army looks boring
and not interesting in a modeler point of view.

And to
those who will spend hours painting just few guys (as I do) I answer that the
result is awesome but, hey man, you don’t have an army finished and you never
played a game and that was the first purpose of those minis.

So as you
can see, for me, there is no one right way to do it. There are as many ways as
there are modelers. You just need to enjoy it, enjoy what you do and have fun!!

For those
who are not painting soviets but Germans or Japanese you can of course apply
the same process of reflection. There are books comparable to the one on soviet
soldiers and many threads on the internet.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

I know it’s
been a long time since I didn’t write on this blog. So let’s start this New
Year with a very simple idea which can help some of you who don’t have ideas to
base their 15mm soldiers.

The FIMO
past is something very easy to use for this purpose. There are a lot of
possibilities and I will only show some of them, I’m sure you’ll find a lot of
other applications. You’ll need just few tools and even if they are not
mandatory they are very useful. You can see those tools on the picture below.

My first
idea was to represent track marks. Very easy to do as you just need some
cooking paper and tracks from you tanks. The FIMO past needs to be cooked to
harden so the cooking paper helps in this process to move the track marks in
the oven. As the FIMO past will stick on the object you’ll use to make the
print I highly recommend to put Vaseline on the object before.

You can of
course follow the same process with a wheel. On this picture you can see marks
of IS-2, T34, Tiger, Panther, SdKfz tracks and truck wheels.

You can
sculpt things like tank traps or impact craters.

All those
things could also be done with Green Stuff or whatever else you prefer.

The last
idea I had was to do small bricks to put on urban bases. For this you have to
make a fine layer of FIMO, very flat, and then use a razor blade to cut small
bricks. You don’t separate them before cooking.